Who Is Randy Bryce? 5 Things You Should Know About Paul Ryan's Congressional Challenger

On June 18, Randy Bryce released one of the most affecting political ads in years. The iron worker from Wisconsin announced he would run against House Speaker Paul Ryan in his home district next year. And he's about as far from Paul Ryan as you can get.

Bryce, a veteran and cancer survivor who has run for office several times before, is trying to position himself as a working man who actually listens to the average voter. But he has an uphill battle to defeat Paul Ryan. Here's what you need to know about him.

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1. He's capitalizing on his everyman backstory.

Bryce has been an iron worker for decades, and took some college courses but did not graduate. Instead, he enlisted in the military. Boyce was posted in Honduras during his time in the U.S. Army, and received the Army Achievement Medal, according to his campaign website.

The single dad from Caledonia, Wisconsin argued that his background makes him more qualified than Ryan to represent his district. His blue-collar roots are so obvious that multiplepeople have compared his very identity to the discography of Bruce Springsteen. Bryce, who is half-Polish and half-Mexican, even tweets under the handle @IronStache, a nod to his Ron Swanson-esque facial hair.

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"I decided to run for office because not everybody's seated at the table, and it's time to make a bigger table," Bryce, a lifelong resident of southeast Wisconsin, said in his political ad. "Let's trade places. Paul Ryan, you can work the iron, and I'll go to D.C."

2. Healthcare is a personal issue for him.

Bryce was diagnosed with testicular cancer after his military tour ended. He didn't believe he could ever have children, so he considers his son, Ben, a "miracle child." His mother has multiple sclerosis, and his ad opens with her talking about her story. "I'm on 20 drugs, and if I don't take the one that costs thousands of dollars, I don't know what would happen," she said. He juxtaposed his mother's struggle with Speaker Ryan's American Health Care Act.

He told The New Republic that ironworkers are self-insured, so sometimes he doesn't qualify for insurance during the slow season when he doesn't work enough hours. His cancer has left him with a pre-existing condition, and he says he worries about coverage for both himself and his son.

"My mother has multiple sclerosis, my father is in assisted living, and I survived cancer in my 20s to have a miracle child in my 40s," he said in a press release. "What Paul Ryan and the Republicans are doing to take health care away from millions of us, to make it cost more and cover less, and to allow the protections we've gained to be stripped away–it's just unacceptable."

3. He has already lost three elections.

The Washington Post reports that Bryce has a losing record when it comes to elections. In 2012, he lost a Democratic primary for a state assembly seat. A year later, he lost a primary for his county board of education. And a year after that, he lost a general election for state senate in 2013.

"The voters of Wisconsin have already rejected Randy Bryce multiple times," Republican Party spokesman Alec Zimmerman told the Associated Press. "Instead of fighting for hard-working Wisconsin families, Randy Bryce will say and do anything to get to Washington and defend his liberal special interest friends."

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So far, his political career has remained pretty local. Boyce has been active in his union, the Ironworkers Local 8, and serves as its political coordinator. He's the president of the Wisconsin Veterans Chamber of Commerce, and chairs the Democratic Party of Wisconsin Veterans Caucus. He was also recently on the Milwaukee Area Labor Council's board of directors. And in 2016, he was a surrogate for Bernie Sanders, according to The Wall Street Journal. He later campaigned for Hillary Clinton and would have been an elector for her had she won.

4. But he's recruited an all-star team this time around.

Bill Hyers, who worked on Barack Obama's campaign and ran campaigns for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, has signed on to Bryce's campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal. So far, he's been successful. The Washington Post reports the campaign raised $100,000 in the first 24 hours after the ad was released.

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According to Payday Report, a site that covers unions, Bryce already has endorsements from the Milwaukee Building Trades, former House candidate Rob Zerban, and state Senator Chris Larson. And Bryce tweeted on June 22 that he had two more endorsements, one from his very own union.

But the odds are certainly stacked against any of the candidates. If any of them won, they would be the third American since 1862 to defeat a sitting Speaker of the House. And this is in a district that hasn't had a Democrat win a seat in Congress since 1995. Ryan himself won 65% of the vote to get re-elected in 2016, while Donald Trump won the district by 10 percentage points.

"Donald Trump won an area in Kenosha that had traditionally been Democratic, but people are waking up and they're seeing that it was all talk," Bryce told The New Republic. "They have buyer's remorse now."

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